(Bloomberg) -- Blossom Capital has raised $432 million to back early-stage tech startups in Europe, a third of which has been earmarked for cryptocurrency investments, founder Ophelia Brown said in an interview.
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London-based Blossom Capital is looking to bolster its investment in the crypto sector, which is increasingly going mainstream from being a niche financial tool. Investing in platforms can be a way of betting on the ecosystem without picking winners among the thousands of digital assets.
"We aren't looking to just invest in crypto assets, we are also eyeing equity stakes in early-stage companies developing crypto infrastructure," Brown said.
Blossom has invested in the likes of online payments company Checkout.com, whose $40 billion valuation in a funding round this month made it one of Europe's most valuable startups. Other bets include business-forecasting platform Pigment and cybersecurity-automation startup Tines.
The female-backed firm's biggest investment to date is in crypto-payments company MoonPay, which closed a $555 million round in November at a value of $3.4 billion. Despite sharp swings in digital token prices from one day to the next, many venture capitalists are betting that crypto is becoming an unstoppable juggernaut.
"The word is out about crypto and the innovative applications that can be built around the blockchain, so that could inflate values for early-stage companies," said managing partner Alex Lim. "But our investment horizon is a decade long and we are less concerned about day-to-day volatility."
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